European Schoolnet, a network of 30 European Ministries of Education, has developed and published teacher training courses available free of charge for teacher training organisations and other training providers.

The courses, designed for secondary level teachers’ professional development in the digital age, have been created within the EC-funded CPDLab project, and developed by four Ministries of Education, expert teachers and experienced teacher trainers. The three course topics are making the most of the Interactive Whiteboard, bringing eSafety into everyday teaching, and creating innovative Future Classroom Scenarios.

A total of 58 participants took part in summer 2013 in three course aimed for secondary school teachers. The courses, created within the EC-funded CPDLab project, have been developed by Euroepan Schoolnet together with four Ministries of Education, expert teachers and experienced teacher trainers. The feedback received from the course participants was very positive and encouraging, indicating that there is a need for this kind of trainings.

The three courses are:

Pedagogical use of Interactive Whiteboards and technologies;

eSafety in the school and classroom;

Future Classroom Scenarios.

The course evaluation was very positive, for example, all teachers either agreed or strongly agreed when asking if they would recommend the course to their colleagues. See also the teacher interview videos here.

The CPDLab project is reaching its exciting conclusion, publishing the three courses designed for secondary schools across Europe in the early autumn. ‘Pedagogical use of Interactive Whiteboards and technologies’, ‘eSafety in the school and classroom’ and ‘Future Classroom Scenarios’ will be published under a Creative Commons License 3.0 – Attribution, Share Alike license, which will allow their use and adaptation by training institutes and educational organisations.

A series of webinars on the use of these courses took place throughout September. See below the presentation and if you are interested in reusing any of the courses, contact us!

The CPDLab course “Interactive Whiteboards – Making the most of your IWB, a pedagogical approach” concluded on 5th July after a week-long exploration into effective use of the interactive whiteboard technology.

The twenty-one participants on the course came from 13 countries across Europe to share and discuss how to effectively use their interactive whiteboards in learning and teaching. There was a mix of experience levels in the group – ranging from almost complete beginner to those with several years of experience in using interactive technologies and this provided an exciting framework for the participants to support and learn from each other.

Throughout the course, participants steadily built up their expertise of using interactive whiteboards in a range of pedagogical scenarios. There was also a focus on the role of the student and the teacher within the interactive classroom. The assortment of interactive whiteboard models and collaborative tools available in the Future Classroom Lab allowed for opportunity to experiment with new technologies too. A highlight of the course was an experiment around collaboration beyond the classroom with one of the participants teaching the rest of the class how to programme a musical sequencer on an interactive whiteboard via web-conferencing.

The course concluded with the participants undertaking “The Challenge” to create their own new resources. At the end of the week, the participants were able to share these with each other. The presentations illustrated the range of expertise gained and there was great enthusiasm for putting all of the new knowledge into good use when the participants returned home.